Home For Christmas
by whenshesayshush
Summary: "He tried to keep his face neutral as he tore the wrapping paper off of a horribly tacky Christmas bow tie, but he could tell by the way his palms instantly felt clammy that he'd most likely failed. Christmas had never been his kind of holiday." Missing scenes for episode 3x11. Neric friendship.


**A/N: **Two short missing scenes taking place during the Christmas gathering at the end of episode 3x11 Higher Power. Basically just me trying to answer a couple of questions that the episode raised in story-form. First foray into NCIS:LA fiction; in fact the first fic I've finished/published in a long time. Thank you to duskbutterfly for being willing to proof-read!

**Disclaimer:** NCIS:LA, its characters and the few details taken directly from the episode are not mine. Nor are the lyrics, they are from Maria Mena's 'Home For Christmas'.

* * *

_Careful what you say  
This time of year  
Tends to weaken me  
_

* * *

**Home For Christmas**

He tried to keep his face neutral as he tore the wrapping paper off of a horribly tacky Christmas bow tie, but he could tell by the way his palms instantly felt clammy that he'd most likely failed. Christmas had never been his kind of holiday. In fact, holidays in general had never been his thing. Halloween was alright; Halloween meant he was able to be among children his age and not stand out. IQ doesn't matter when you're dressed up like a cowboy. Independence Day he could deal with, although once he'd read about pyrotechnics he never enjoyed the fireworks display as much as he had before. He'd try to explain the chemical oxidation process to the kids from his street but his voice could never quite overpower the sound of the explosions. His seven-year-old self kept repeating they would've listened to him if it had. But Christmas, no, Christmas was nothing short of a nightmare, and he had been a nightmare every year it came around.

Because Christmas meant having to dress up, which he had hated even back then, and his mother being in a state of borderline panic all day, and the whole family coming over for dinner and making it once again glaringly apparent that he did not fit in with these people. He knew he was different, they knew he was different, and he usually didn't last an hour before being sick and tired of dumbing his speech down for someone who obviously didn't care about the advanced math he was taking in school in the slightest – but it was socially desirable to ask and so they did. He couldn't remember making it to desert without being successfully sent to his room until the Christmas he told them he'd be moving out.

That was the last Christmas he spent with his family. He knew he should probably feel a bit guilty about that, but he didn't, and that was that.

"Put it on, Eric! At least something about your outfit will be Christmassy!"

He looked up from the green tie adorned with Santa hats to see the other team members already wearing theirs – Nell's was a hair clip and Hetty's a brooch – and gift-bearer Kensi looking at him expectantly.

"Actually, I'm wearing red, which is universally regarded as one of the colors of Christmas, along with green of course. It represents the blood Christ shed during his crucifixion. Or, if you're not specifically religiously inclined, it stems from the tradition of 14th Century Miracle Plays performed to educate the illiterate, in which The Tree Of Good And Evil was represented by a pine tree decorated with apples in lack of actual apple trees around Christmas time."

There was a short pause among the group before Callen cut in with: "He just doesn't know how to tie it".

"Never seen one in his life I'm sure!" Sam agreed, chuckling.

"It's stitched into shape, how hard can it be?" Deeks asked with a bewildered face as he flicked his finger against his. "Although I suppose we can't all be as fashionably gifted as myself."

Eric left the witty retort to that comment up to Kensi and instead found Nell stepping up to him, her fingers prying the bow tie from his.

"Let me," she near-whispered, and he leaned forward slightly to give her access to his neck.

He knew _she_ knew it was more than a lack of tying ability that had thrown him off. Not because he'd told her, they rarely spoke of their youths or their families back home, but because she'd learned to read him like a book in the little over a year she had been his partner at OSP. He'd like to say the same were true in reverse, but he'd be flattering himself. She was still 63.4% (or so he guesstimated) a mystery to him, and would likely _always_ be 63.4% a mystery to him, because not a day in OPS went by without him discovering something about her that surprised him. It could be something as simple as an interest in a certain movie, or a snippet of the depth of her intelligence, or a facial expression she hadn't pulled in exactly that way before.

"Bow ties weren't actually invented to make someone look sophisticated;" Nell offered overly loudly, making it clear the message was meant for the team rather than him alone, "they were first used during the Prussian Wars with solely practical motives: to keep shirts closed, denote rank or hide stains."

She wrapped her arms around his neck to grasp the other end of the band as she directed it to the front, where she fiddled with it for a bit before clasping it. Her fingers grazed his skin when she pulled on it until the bow covered his throat, and for the second time tonight he tried to keep his face neutral. This time it was the heat rushing up his cheeks that signified his lack of success. He kept his head down as she gave a few pulls on both cotton loops, straightening it out.

"It was the French who then ran with the idea and turned it into an upper class fashion statement."

He smiled, recognizing her gift of a distraction and an ally for what it was, and his eyes finally rose to meet hers.

"It's always the French."

"You'd say that, you're half-German."

She lowered her arms and stepped back, evaluating her handy-work.

"How do I look?" He was well aware of the fact that he was now wearing surfer shorts, a hoodie and a bow tie, and if she had been anyone else, he wouldn't have asked.

"Ridiculous," she said, and simply gave a nod and kept her composure as the rest of the team had a laughing fit. It felt like having an invisible friend at the Christmas table.

* * *

Her fingers absentmindedly fiddled with the cotton bow in her hair. It was secured just fine, and it might've been either her third glass of Theakston's Christmas Ale, the daylong burden of a severe case of _saudade_, or the fact that her eyes were level with its copy around Eric's neck that caused the nervous tick. If anyone had asked her about it, she'd probably just have summed the whole situation up by saying 'it's Christmas', because it being Christmas just did something to her, every year, without exception. In her earliest memory she is three years old, and her sisters are jumping on her bed screaming something about presents, and when they make it to the living room – miraculously without tumbling headfirst down the stairs – her mother shoves a pair of reindeer antlers onto her little ginger head. Every other memory she had of any Christmas at home involved the same kind of folly. Christmas had always been a _thing_ in the Jones' household, and it was still a _thing_ in Nell's head, even if she was miles away from said household right now.

Yet seeing her family on the video chat screen and realizing that Christmas was also still a _thing_ at home, just without her, had thrown her off. It wasn't that she expected her family to cancel Christmas when she couldn't make it, nor had her mother failed to express how they would miss her when she declined their invitation. It was just that it was so much easier to deny how much not being able to be there affected her when she didn't have an actual representation of what she was missing. Now, she knew that her grandfather had gotten another sweater as a gift, that her uncle was out of the hospital again, and that her youngest sister was wearing the antlers instead of her.

And as much as she wanted accept that she had to have two separate lives, there was still a part of her that felt like she belonged neither here nor there now.

"You do kind of owe me an explanation after exposing me to your family without proper notice."

She had to consciously pull her hand out of her hair to stop her fidgeting and look up at Eric as he shoved the last bite of one of her Sig Sauer biscuits into his mouth.

"Okay, fine," she sighed, and though she wasn't looking at him directly, she could sense him leaning towards her in anticipation. He had been sporadically questioning her about his encounter with her family all afternoon. She silently cursed her mother and her big mouth; if she had just greeted Eric like a total stranger instead of implying they knew whether he wore boxers or briefs, she wouldn't feel obliged to answer him. But as it was, she knew she'd feel the same way if their roles were reversed, and so she reluctantly downed the rest of her – definitely last – glass of Ale, and scanned the Bullpen to see if their conversation was acceptably private.

"I'm really close with my family, so when I first started here it was really hard for me to lie to them about my life. I thought it might be easier if I could slip in a couple of truths, just some small, inconsequential facts that weren't completely fictional. So when I called to tell them about the so-called news editing job, I uh… I kind of mentioned you."

When she glanced up to gauge his reaction, she had expected to see his smug smile; the one he often wore when he cracked a case or broke the internet. Instead, she was met with the same expression he'd had the day she told him she admired him – the sort of stunned yet bemused look that she wasn't sure she'd ever seen anyone else pull off.

"You're the person I spend most of my time with here, so it just seemed appropriate to tell them. It stops them worrying I'm a workaholic and don't have any friends in Los Angeles, and I feel a little less guilty knowing that there is at least one thing in my life I haven't lied to them about," she finished.

He blinked a couple of times and she realized that maybe, he hadn't been pestering her all afternoon to figure out exactly what personal information of his she had shared without his permission. Maybe behind all of his questioning had been genuine surprise that she would tell her family about him at all.

"I'm sorry you can't be with them tonight."

The sincere look on his face had her hand on its way back to the bow until his fingers closed around her wrist and pulled it back down gently. She chuckled half-heartedly.

"It's not that I don't enjoy being here, but…"

"But you're always here, and it's Christmas, and you'd rather be there for one day."

"Exactly."

It took her a heartbeat or two to realize that the pleasant warmth creeping up her arm was radiating from his skin still on hers. He hastily released her.

"I uh…I'm planning to watch a selection of really bad Christmas movies when I get home. How do you feel about gingerbread?"

And while gingerbread had never been part of the traditional Jones' Christmas, she thought that perhaps it could be the first tradition of Nell's Christmas. She'd always secretly thought the antlers looked ridiculous anyway.

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**A/N: Thank you for reading! If you could spare a minute to leave me some feedback, I'd really appreciate it. I'm open to any constructive criticism. Also, if my muse is cooperative, I might try writing some more of these missing scenes to explore Eric and Nell more. If anyone has any suggestions for particular scenes/episodes they would like to read about, let me know. I can't promise I'll actually write that particular scene, but if a plot bunny strikes...**


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